“With all due respect, that only those who are born in America and both of whose parents were U.S. citizens at the time of his birth can be deemed to be natural-born citizens is not, and has never been, the prevailing interpretation of the natural-born citizen clause.”

James Madison wrote the U.S.Constitution. As President, it was his administration’s official position that ONLY those born to U.S. citizen parents could be U.S. citizens themselves.

The following is often used to support people like Rubio who seek to be President, but it was superceded centuries ago and is a false argument.

The First U.S. Congress included in the 1790 Immigration & Naturalization Act language to alert the State Department to the fact that Americans born abroad are natural born citizens and are not to be viewed as foreigners due to foreign birth. They were not granted citizenship via that US statute, rather their automatic citizenship was stated as a fact that must be recognized by immigration authorities. They were not citizens by any other means than natural law, and statutory law was written to insure that their natural citizenship was recognized.

This is not a reasonable explanation. It fails to recognize that Congress only has powers over naturalization. Congress has no power to define natural born Citizen, which has nothing to do with naturalization. Furthermore, if Congress wants to tell the State Department something, they dont have to enact legislation to do it.

But more important is that all of the following naturalization acts, 1795, 1802, etc., were also passed to naturalize the children of U.S. citizens born abroad. And the words natural born were repealed in the 1795 Naturalization Act and never returned again.

Natural born Citizen is a class of citizens born in the United States (jus solis) of Citizen parents (jus sanguinus).

This has been the legal definition of natural born citizen, per Minor v. Happerset, since 1875.

As for Chester A. Arthur, usurper President, he knew he wasn’t eligible and burned all his private papers to prevent that discovery later after his death. Ha! It didn’t work.

Truth is the daughter of time.

31 posted on 02/16/2013 5:17:07 PM PST by SatinDoll
(NATURAL BORN CITZEN: BORN IN THE USA OF CITIZEN PARENTS.)

This has been the legal definition of natural born citizen, per Minor v. Happerset, since 1875.

Minor has never said what birthers seem to think it says. Sorry to rain on your parade but nobody is buying this crap. Nobody important anyways. No reputable conservative constitutional scholars, attorneys, judges or legal foundations. Only crackpots like Orly Taitz, Philip Berg and Leo Donofrio. And when Marco Rubio throws his hat into the ring, this nonsense will continue to get laughed out of courtrooms just as it has justifiably been for the past four years.

I am well aware that you don’t understand what the Minor Case says, having read your posts before. Feel free to keep spreading your urban legends all you want, and I’ll stick to the truth. The Minor Case isn’t very long, and I invite people to read the entire opinion (not just a single sentence taken out of context).

I’ll make you a deal—get a court to remove Obama from office because his father was not a U.S. citizen when Obama was born, and I’ll accept that your fringe theory, after having been refected for two centuries, finally has become the prevalent interpretation of the NBC Clause, and then I’d be willing to rule Rubio out as a presidential candidate. But I don’t think we should disarm unilaterally, particularly based on a legal theory that no one takes seriously.